Metallica (16722-1)

METALLICA
is a mega-band of heavy metal from 80s and 90s, whose name became a
face of heavy metal for many fans and musicians. There are only few
bands in the history of rock that reached such height as Metallica,
and I doubt that today someone else has such fame and popularity as
them. In short fifteen years this band turned from a bunch of
basement amateurs into a national sensation. Most importantly
Metallica never compromised their music for anyone in show business.
Their music always was their self-expression, their faith. In this
story, I will try to tell how Metallica began.

Metallica’s
beginning as many other things in this world owes to someone being at
the right place in the right time. I’m talking about one of the
founders of future legend – its drummer, Lars Ulrich, who was
born in faraway Denmark. This fact is interesting, because only two
famous performers of heavy metal were ever born in Denmark: King
Diamond and Ulrich himself. Lars was born in a suburb of Copenhagen
on December 26, 1963 in family of famous at that time tennis player,
Torben Ulrich. Due to this, problem of Lars’s profession was
solved at early age. At the beginning little Lars constantly traveled
all around the world with his dad to different championships and
tournaments, and later took up tennis himself. By the time Lars was
ten, he was in the top ten of Danish junior league, and would only
keep advancing. Both Lars and his father were thinking that his
future was set as a tennis star. However, that soon changed. In
February of 1973 young Lars accidentally wound up at a concert of
Deep Purple. He was taken there by his father’s friend –
old hippie and fan of hard rock. Lars himself had little interest in
that kind of music. What he saw, however, turned his world upside
down. A week later, Lars brought home his first vinyl disc –
album Deep Purple ‘71’ ‘Fireball’. Lars also
got into Sweet, Uriah Heep, Slade, Thin Lizzy, and Black Sabbath –
all the British rock-elite. Black Sabbath’s concert in 75
inspired other people too, so Copenhagen at the time had plenty of
teenagers jumping with some heavy music and trying make guitarists of
themselves. Lars, on the other hand, chose a very different
instrument for himself – the drums. More and more often you
could see him spending time with two sticks and a bunch of boxes
instead of his tennis racket. Lars finally got real drums for his
13th birthday after bugging his grandmother for several months. One
time going around his favorite of music stores, Lars found out “New
Wave of British Heavy Metal” or “NWOBHM” that
changed his life again. In fall of 79 Lars finally met a real, live
rocker – drummer of Motorhead, Phil Taylor. Lars’s
parents at the same time were trying to find a way to deal with their
son’s growing music obsession. They decided on moving to
America, where they were sure, it would be easier for Lars to
concentrate on sport and continue his promising career in that field,
because of all the different tennis tournaments going on in there. So
in the middle of 1980 the whole family moved across the ocean to
California. Their new home became a place called New-Port Beach,
several miles to the south of Los-Angeles. Lars’s parents sold
his drums in Denmark before the move and made him start on tennis
again. That didn’t work, however. Two months after the move,
Lars got himself his own drums, and this time there was nothing his
parents could do to keep him away from them. Lars had a problem with
America, though: nobody even heard about the music he was so crazy
about. There was nothing heavier than Van Halen on the west coast at
that time. It is easy to understand how lonely Lars was in his
passions. Everyone considered him completely crazy and hopelessly
focused on his drums and foreign heavy metal. In the beginning of
1981, however, Lars got lucky – he finally met a common
thinker, a guy named Jeff Warner, who played the guitar and also
liked British rock. Right after they met, both agreed to devote all
their free time to heavy metal. In the end of February they met Lloyd
Grant, a skilled black guitarist, who was ten years older than Lars
and Jeff. Even though it didn’t cause any trouble, after
several weeks of training together, the three broke up. Lars and
Lloyd had some purely communication problems, and Jeff, disappointed
by what happened, left too.

Now
back to 63, when on August 3, James Allan Hetfield was born in
Los-Angeles’s suburb, Norwalk. Unlike Lars, James Hetfield
started taking on music at very early age – his father Virgil
made him take fortepiano lessons. All those lessons made Beethoven,
Mozart, and all other classics, Hetfield’s “enemies”.
With that set of mind, James didn’t really try with the piano
and interest himself with theory part; he just banged the keys to
make some noise. Interestingly enough, James’s older brother
considered him to be skilled enough and accepted him into his own
band The Bitter End, where he himself played the drums. Gradually
James got into heavy metal as much as Lars did.

Story
of the third member of future band Metallica, story of Ron McGownie,
can be summed up in only one saying: “Tell me who your friends
are, and I’ll tell you who you are.” Ron was growing a
perfect boy, until he met with Hetfield. Ron didn’t share
James’s music passions, but in time James infected him with
them, and Ron decided to start playing the guitar, too.

James
started two bands one after another: Obsession, and Syrinx, but
neither lasted that long. In 1980 James’s mother died and he
moved to Brie with his brother. There he met with guy named Hue
Tanner and formed a band called Phantom Lord. The band wasn’t
really one, it was James and Hue sitting and playing together. They
didn’t have a bass player, so James offered Ron that place. Ron
wasn’t a bass player, he didn’t even have a bass guitar,
but James didn’t care, he decided to teach Ron and he did.
Phantom Lord, however, wasn’t doing all that good: Hue Tanner,
as good as he was as a guitarist, finally decided to go into music
management. Couple of days after Hue left, James brought a drummer
named Jim Mulligan, who was his former classmate, and a new
guitarist, Troy James – Hetfield still wanted to be only a
vocalist. After all these changes a new band was formed –
Leather Charm. This band, however, played a very different kind of
music from what Hetfield played before: Leather Charm played the real
glam-rock. For the first time they wrote three of their own songs:
“Hit The Lights’, “Handsome Ransom” and
“Let’s Go Rock’n’Roll”. First one was
included in Metallica debut album and the other two later made one
song – “No Remorse”. Leather Charm itself, didn’t
last long either: they didn’t play any concerts and Mulligan
wanted to played more progressive music. Nevertheless, Leather Charm
because an ugly prototype of future Metallica.

But
without Lars Ulrich, METALLICA wasn’t destined to be. This way
we come to a moment when James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich finally meet
each other. When Leather Charm broke up, James placed an ad in
California newspaper “The Recycler” – something
like looking for musicians in a band. But here’s the tricky
part: such ads were so rare that in section “Heavy-metal”
of “The Recycler” there were only two names: James
Hetfield and... Lars Ulrich! So it was impossible for them not to
call each other. It’s also very interesting, it turned out that
James and Lars already met and even played together. When it was only
James and Hue, Hue brought Lars to one of their rehearsals, and they
all played a little together. That time, however, both James and Ron
(it happened in his house, but he didn’t play yet) thought Lars
was the worst drummer on earth. Lars couldn’t hold the rhythm,
and was awful compared to Mulligan. Fate, however, had other opinion,
so this time was different. After meeting with James, Lars dragged
James to his house where he played his vinyl discs to James the whole
day constantly adding some needed and unneeded comments, and also
stories about various European concerts and parties with Diamond Head
and Motorhead. Hetfield instantly fell in love with all those British
bands, but he was too shocked by information overload, moreover as he
never even NWOBHM before. “At that time I was listening to
Black Sabbath, Judas Priest – bands also British, but I never
had any idea about any underground!” His impression of Lars,
however, was much different from impression he got from Lars’
music collection. It’s even rumored that James said to Lars
that he stinks and suggested using soap. On the other hand, James was
downright impressed by how rich Lars’s family was and all the
excellent music equipment Lars had. At the same time Lars was pulled
in by James’s experience in collective work and all his ideas
and suggestions for rehearsals, renting their own place to play, and
all the other stuff necessary for a band to exist. “Of course,
I wanted all this”, Lars says, “but James just stumbled
me with all his ideas. To say the truth, I just wanted someone to
play my favorite songs with, instead of simply sitting alone and
mindlessly pounding the drums.” Nevertheless, the same evening,
thanks to James Hetfield’s determination the legendary
METALLICA was conceived. Of course it took them much more than one
time to get something done. When it came to first rehearsals,
Hetfield called Lars an incapable Dutch midget, and left banging the
door. To tell the truth though, Lars wasn’t really wasn’t
that good at the time, and had to play the cheapest “Woolworsth”
set of drums that cost him seven bucks. Over a period of time,
however, Lars and James got over their animosity and became good
friends.

Their
not so big start came with help of one of Lars’s friends
working in publishing of “New Heavy Metal Review”, Brian
Slegel. At that time, in 1981, there were more and more heavy metal
bands appearing in Los-Angeles, and Brian decided to put best of them
on one disc. To put this idea to life Slegel created his own company
– “Metal Blade”, and started calling all his
familiar local bands for this compilation, which was going to be
called “Metal Massacre”. Brian already got a yes for a
song for Bitch, Steeler and Ratt, when he got a call from Lars Ulrich
who asked if Slegel could include a song from Lars’s band if he
was able to put one together. Brian said that he would be happy to do
it, by that giving a start to METALLICA! Slegel may overestimate his
contribution into creation of this mega band, but METALLICA really
got their first song out with “Metal Massacre”. After
talking on the phone with Slegel, Ulrich hurriedly found James
Hetfield, and told him that they had a chance to be featured on a
vinyl if they came up with a whole band real fast. Hetfield agreed,
as he figured there was nothing to lose. This way a distant
likelihood of a band was quickly compiled. After that, they still had
a task of writing the song itself. This, however, took them even less
time than compiling a band. Their “Hit The Lights” was
piece of James’s old Leather Charm song, with Lars adding
something of his own to it. Due to fact that their likelihood of the
band had an awful shortage of players, Lars and James had to record
drums, bass, guitar and vocal on a primitive four-track “TEAC”
all by themselves. After that they got a soloist named Lloyd Grant
who was already mentioned in the story through the same “Recycler”.
Even though the quality of their final recording had a vast room for
improvement, Brian Slegel was happy with “Hit The Lights”
and even declared it the best song he got for his compilation. Such
turn of events made musicians themselves much more than happy, and
James even changed his opinion about Lars’s skills and decided
the continue their joint playing. Moreover, Lars finally got a new
set of drums and they sounded nothing like the old set did.